WebOs RDP Client FAQ

Press one finger to an inactive area of the windows screen. Leave that finger pressed and then using another finger tap or drag. The second finger will act as a right mouse button click or drag.

How do I pan the screen?

Press three fingers to the screen and drag them up/down, the screen should pan.

Where is the on screen keyboard?

The on-screen keyboard is shown by pressing three fingers to an inactive portion of the screen. If a bluetooth keyboard is attached this will not work. Instead the keyboard, symbol on the HP bluetooth keyboard must be pressed, after pressing three fingers to the screen.

Where is the 104 key, keyboard?

It can be accessed via the degree sign next to the multiplication and division signs, on the symbols portion of the webos keyboard. To switch back to the webos keyboard, use the keyboard with the left right arrows in the upper corner of the 104 key keyboard. This is a fully multitouch enabled keyboard, so it accepts key combinations like ctrl-f1, ctrl-alt-delete, and nearly everything else that is possible with a normal keyboard. Its also ugly, see item #4 in this faq..

How can I type something if the on-screen keyboard is obscuring the text entry.

There are two solutions, first you can pan the display up and down with three fingers pressed to the screen.The second solution is to reduce your keyboard size (press and hold the hide keyboard button on the lower right, then select XS).The other choice for heavy users may be to use a bluetooth keyboard.

Why don't I hear sound

The sound support can be enabled by putting a /s at the end of the connection string. That said, there are sound sync issues (may actually be windows in some cases) and the extra overhead may cause connection drops

How to I get the start menu to appear or press the left windows key?

Use the multiplication key on the on-screen keyboard. This is not the "*", but rather the symbol found between the "+" and division signs on the middle of the keyboard when its in the symbols mode (press the "+=[]" button on the lower left side to switch to symbol mode). Sometimes this appears to fail, and that is due to the way clicks and pans are being handled. With the on-screen keyboard active, try tapping an inactive area of the windows desktop, or an application title bar. Then press the multiplication key. The 104 key, keyboard can also be used.

How do I press ctrl-alt-delete or get the windows security menu to appear?

Use the division key on the on-screen keyboard. This is not the "/", but rather the symbol found between in the middle of the keyboard when its in the symbols mode (press the "+=[]" button on the lower left side to switch to symbol mode). The 104 key keyboard can also be used.

How do I send a ctrl, alt, F1-F12, etc key combinations?

Use the 104 key keyboard! This is a new feature in the 3.1 release.

It seems slower with the keyboard enabled, is that true?

Yes, with the onscreen keyboard active the panning support decreases the drawing rate by 2-5x. Hopefully a solution will be found in the near future.

How do I leave sound at the remote computer

Leave sound at remote can be enabled by putting a /l at the end of the connection string.

How do I specify a username for a connection?

The connect string (entered at the please enter a hostname prompt) supports a username prefix like "username@hostname.domainname". This will populate the windows login dialog, and save the username for future connections to that machine.

My windows machine exports its remote desktop from a nonstandard TCP port number, how do I connect?

The connect string (entered at the please enter a hostname prompt) supports a port number suffix. It can be entered like "hostname.domainname:portnumber".

How do I do a console mode RDP connection?

The console mode may be enabled by placing a /0 after the connection string. For example "myname@myhost.net/0"

How do I reset the terminal server device license information after the initial connection? Aka what should I do if I see "internal license" failures, or can connect once, and then I get an error message, on successive connections?

Terminal servers may be licensed per user, or per device, if licensed per device, the license information needs to be reset during initial connection creation. To do this add a /n option at the end of the connection string

I have a 3rd party bluetooth keyboard, why doesn't X button work?

Right now the best support exists with the HP touchpad keyboards. All of the keys on those keyboards should work as expected. The problem of course, is that the touchpad keyboard has "function" keys bound to webos functions like sound volume. 3rd party keyboards tend to work in webos, but the scancodes for keys that don't exist on the touchpad keyboard are either trapped by the OS and thrown away, or translated to keystrokes that exist on the touchpad keyboard for SDL applications. Hopefully a solution will be found in the future.

How can I double click?

(UPDATE: Version 0.2.6 tweaks some mouse behavior to make double click detection easier) The client is not sending explicit double clicks. Rather it's sending repeated single clicks. This magnifies the problem that it's (apparently) harder to quickly double tap the same location on the screen than double click a mouse button. Network latency may also be causing slowdowns. Lowering the windows double click rate via "start->settings->control panel->mouse->buttons->Double Click Speed" may help. The location of this page varies a little depending on what version of windows is being run. In win7 its "start->control panel->hardware and sound->devices and printers->Mouse->activities->Double-Click Speed". In the near future a relative mouse mode, and/or some double click, right click, etc buttons may be added to the UI.

Why does the app appear to hang after being uncared during video playback or other drawing intensive operations?

This is a known bug, in version 0.2.9. Please try version 0.3.1

Why is video playback so bad?

Its bad? Ok, its bad! Have you tried it from a windows machine using the Microsoft client? It seems the Microsoft clients don't do much better, especially if XP/2003 are involved.
One of the improvements with win8 is better video support, but the client doesn't support sound on win8 at the moment (probably related to the changes for video Microsoft made), so I can't test it. All that said, a fair amount of tuning has been done in this area.
Youtube videos at lower resolution actually tend to work fairly well in windows 7. With sound turned off, the video is really quite smooth, its the audio/video syncing that causes a lot of the problems.

Why is this site so ugly?

Two words: time and priority. Right now the priority is getting the app working in a manner acceptable to most people.

I'm running windows 8, but I cannot type anything, or click on anything.

If you have 0.3.2, make sure you passed the /8 option at the end of the connect string. This enables fast path mouse and keyboard input, which is required for win8.

I've see comments in the reviews about this, and someone opened a support request on sourceforge, but never responded to it. Frankly, if your seeing the keyboard, and the login
screen it sounds like windows is rejecting the keystrokes. Something similar happens with win8 because it requires fast path input. Passing the /8 option may help..
Another possible issue may be a scancode mismatch between the touchpad, and the windows machine, if the windows machine is configured for a non English keyboard. This should not
be a problem, but it could be. If you see this, please, please, please send me a support email, we can work through it. Finally, if its taking mouse input, as a last resort
using the accessibility keyboard may be an option.